Following an increase in the openness of the South Korean economy since the mid-1990s, farm households have experienced a decrease in their real farm incomes. Hence, over the last decade the Korean government has adopted a variety of rural policy measures, which mostly support community enterprises, to increase the non-farm incomes of farm households and to support rural development. The aim of this study is to explore the major impacts of some key rural development policy measures that aim to boost non-farm activities of farm households in South Korea. This research employed a combination of both quantitative and qualitative techniques. First, an exploratory online survey of farmers provided insights into the most helpful rural policy measures across different regions. Then, face-to-face interviews with 14 key informants helped to narrow the focus of the study down to four main policy measures. Finally, face-to-face in-depth interviews with 48 farmers were used to explore the impacts that these measures have had on farm households and the communities to which they belong. Findings from this study reveal that these four policy measures have all succeeded, to varying degrees, in promoting farmers‟ participation in community enterprises. This in turn has led to an increase in household incomes and also to a range of non-financial benefits such as improved skills and better access to social networks. Community enterprises that are supported by rural development policies are argued to be more successful when supported by effective partnership and leadership, along with appropriately designed support services. The support services currently offered by these policy measures are generally found to be less helpful than improvements to physical assets and in some cases they appear not to respond to the needs of the community businesses that they seek to help. Farm households with higher levels of assets are found to benefit more from these measures and access to financial capital is found to be particularly influential in this respect. This study recommends that the design of future rural policies could be improved to increase participation in community enterprises by making them more accessible to households that do not have the financial means to support co-financing and by including a range of measures (e.g. around partnership, capacity building and advice) designed to improve their impact on rural livelihoods.

The taste and preference for food items of urban consumers in India has changed rapidly in the last decade due to increase in income and change in lifestyle. A number of studies have indicated that urban consumers in India are shifting from low quality food grain to high quality food grain and are ready to pay a higher price for better quality of food grain. The state of Odisha, where rice is a major staple food item and where people consider rice as the major source of calorie intake, is the home to a number of traditional aromatic rice varieties (TARV). Past studies have indicated that consumers have a high demand for TARV. This has been investigated to find out consumer preference for attributes, ’willingness to pay’, consumption habits and buying behaviour of TARV. Content analysis and qualitative data analysis were made by the use of N-Vivo to uncover the latent dimensions of consumer preference for attributes, consumption pattern and perception about different characteristics of TARV. A survey questionnaire and choice experiment was developed and administered to the respondents after conducting qualitative analysis. A number ,. of statistical techniques such as mixed logit, ordered probit, multinomial logit and binary logit were employed to analyse the choice experiment and survey data. It was found that consumers’ ’willingness to pay’ for various attributes of TARV vary significantly though their preference for attributes are more or less found to be similar. Urban consumers’ willingness to pay for attributes ’very clean’, ’no chemicals’, ’clean’, ’very soft’, ’white colour’ and ’highly aromatic’ were found to be higher than other attributes. The knowledge of non-use of chemicals was found to have a significant impact upon urban consumers’ perception about different characteristics of TARV and they perceived TARV favourably. Urban consumers’ preference for mixed format of store over organized retail store for the purchase of TARV reveals that the lack of availability of a preferred variety at an organized retail store always compels them to patronize different formats of store though consumers in higher levels of education were found to be attracted towards organized retail store for the purchase of TARV. The increase or decrease in price of TARV was found to have no impact upon the increase or decrease in quantity of consumption. The policy implications of the research findings were discussed and suggestions for future research directions were proposed.

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The purpose of the work was to gain an understanding of the factors that influence household decision-making on the allocation of household resources and how these impact on the ability to own and successfully look after livestock. Livestock keeping dynamics were examined in terms of factors such as herd structures, production parameters, the ways in which households acquired and lost livestock and the characteristics of households entering and leaving livestock keeping. The study was undertaken in Funyula and Butula Divisions in Busia, Western Kenya and was carried out by means of a two-year longitudinal survey. Both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods were employed in the form of questionnaires and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) exercises. Busia district has a typical smallholder crop-livestock production system with most households relying on crops as their main livelihood strategy and livestock being kept as a means of income diversification. The majority of animals entering livestock holdings were born into the holdings and there was only a 3% increase in the number of livestock keeping households over 2 years. Households purchasing animals generally bought the same species as they had sold. The proportion of animals lost through death ranged from 27% to 33% among the all livestock species and the majority of these deaths were disease related. A quarter of cattle sales were directly attributed to disease and between 5% and 7% of cattle and small ruminants were sold because they were ‘unproductive’, a factor that can often be linked to the presence of disease. Livestock disease episodes were higher during the long rains than the dry season, but more money was spent during the dry season when numbers of disease episodes were low. The provision of credit to farmers would help enable farmers make the initial investment in livestock and in the appropriate management of their animals.

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The research presented was practice based and includes an analytical commentary and a portfolio of illustrations, photographs and diagrams. The thesis describes the exploration and testing of a whole system approach to urban food production and distribution through action research. This was implemented within an existing community characterised by high deprivation. The research drew on scientific, social, ecological, cultural and economic theories of local food production and distribution. It involved creative entrepreneurship to bring these theories into practice. The aims of the research were: 1. to design a whole system ecological approach to urban farming; 2. to establish a working model of such in an area of high social deprivation; 3. to create a centre for ecological research; and 4. to contribute to public awareness of health food and ecological systems in urban environments. The problem of ecological and social crises in relation to food production and distribution in a city context is established. Existing local alternatives to food production and distribution are critiqued. Systems thinking is used as a creative approach to overcome the challenges identified. A methodology of transdisciplinary action-research was used to experiment on the interconnectivity of an array of food production and distribution systems. A community interest company, Biospheric Foundation (CIC), was created in order to deliver the Biospheric Project. This has become an urban farm and research laboratory in inner city Salford. The analytical commentary documents the implementation of action research to tell the story of the Biospheric Project. A Portfolio of Works illustrates the implementation of the project. The various elements, systems and components have been used to create a closed system that is ecologically sustainable and adaptive. This created the first whole system approach to urban farming in an area of deprivation in Europe. An elegant design process and artistic aesthetic has been brought to the way in which the scientific systems connect to create a whole ecology, and thereby contribute new knowledge.

The study is concerned with the production and marketing of dura (sorghum) and sesame in the eastern central rainlands of the Sudan. The two crops are regarded as major export commodities and considerable emphasis has been given to expanding the areas under cultivation using mechanised farming cultivation. The study examines production aspects and the marketing component of the research concentrates on comparing the performancies of the public and private sectors. Dura marketing is in the hands of the latter and sesame in the former. The thesis consists of eleven chapters and begins with an introduction to the economy of the Sudan. Four chapters then follow on dura production and marketing. The first deals with both the economic and agronomic aspects of mechanised dura production with special reference to the two main surplus areas, Gedaref and Damazine. The second chapter deals with the production of dura in the Sudan. The third chapter discusses the internal trade in dura - together with the spatial and temporal analysis . The marketing situation is also dealt with in detail. The final chapter on dura examines the world market situation. In the years with good crops the Sudan is a major exporter but when the annual crop is low, the Government bans exports. The next four chapters deal with sesame. The first concentrates on production, the second on the internal trade, the third is concerned with the internal supply, demand and price situation and the fourth with the world trade in oilseeds in which Sudanese sesame is an important commodity. Chapter ten summarises common features of both dura and sesame production and marketing in the Sudan and makes various recommendations to alleviate major problems. In the final chapter, the thesis is summarised and the conclusion presented. The private sector is characterised by oligopoly in the marketing structure, but the level of efficiency attained in the performance of marketing functions is relatively high, given the lack of infrastructure in the Sudan. The public sector is characterised by both exploitive prices and higher costs because of inefficiency. Both sections lead to the depression of producers' prices at a time when production costs are rising steeply. All this has a marked disincentive effect on the producers

This is a new history of irrigation and food production in twentieth-century India. It seeks to challenge the known story of Green Revolution, to question the role of plant breeding in the history of twentieth century agriculture and to de-centre the big dam from our picture of water and modernity. This thesis argues that there is no evidence of a breakthrough in Indian food production the 1960s and 1970s where a Green Revolution is typically placed; this was in fact a period of relatively slow growth in foodgrain production and yields within an era of high growth that had actually begun around 1950. Wheat, which was a small part of India’s food basket was an exception to this general trend of slow growth in the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that High Yielding Varieties of seeds had little to do with this leap in productivity; this was driven by a quick expansion in irrigation facilitated by private tubewells. Tubewell irrigation was initiated by the colonial state and interwar India had the world’s largest tubewell programme. The ability of tubewells to deliver quick results put them on the central government agenda during the Second World War and emphasis on public irrigation (whether from tubewells or dams) increased during the Nehruvian period. The mid-1960s however saw an emphasis on the private tubewell, based on a vision of the peasant as a rational profit-maximizing being who was in conflict with public irrigation systems and their equity objectives. The private-profit motive was put at the centre of agricultural policy, and aided by the World Bank, the government mounted a programme of cheap loans to promote private tubewells which quickly became the most important means of irrigation in India. Putting the tubewell at the heart of my study allows me to re-conceptualise late twentieth-century Indian agriculture. By showing how the World Bank and elite development actors favoured private tubewells, I argue that rising inequality was built into technology choice. This thesis traces the new centrality of the private motive in agricultural policy to Theodore Schultz’s theory of the poor but efficient peasant and argues that ideas of peasant rationality were also central to the adoption of the HYVs which merely justified appropriation of inoptimal quantities of fertilizer by large farmers to produce super-normal yields even as higher overall production could have resulted from spreading fertilizer thin on tall Indian wheat varieties.